HÀ GIANG — Reports about people being kidnapped for their organs in the northern mountainous Hà Giang Province are inaccurate.

Colonel Lê Văn Canh, head of Consulting Office of the Provincial Police Department, talked to Vietnam Plus online newspaper this morning.

Canh rejected statistics issued by Si Ma Cai District’s Police Office in the nearby Lào Cai Province in its legal document 487/TB-CAH, recently signed by deputy head of the office Senior Lieutenant Colonel Trịnh Minh Phú.

The document said there were 16 cases of people being abducted for harvesting organs in the first six months of this year in Hà Giang.

Canh said several kidnapping cases had been reported in the first six months of this year in Hà Giang, but the motive behind them was not harvesting of organs.

The Hà Giang Police Department would ask the Lào Cai Police Department to clarify where they had got the statistics from, he said.

A few days ago, Si Ma Cai District’s Police Office issued the legal document 487/TB-CAH to warn local residents about a new type of crime in which people could be kidnapped and their organs harvested.

The document was widely shared yesterday via social networking sites, causing public concern.

In another movement, last night, Hoàng Tiến Bình, head of the Si Ma Cai District’s Police Office, said people should not get too affected by the report. The document only aimed to remind them of the risk, though in reality, such cases had never occurred in the district.

The police office issued the document after receiving a message from the Lào Cai Police Department about people being abducted and their organs being harvested in the neighbouring Hà Giang Province in the first six months of this year, he said.— VNS